Horrortoberfest Day 7 – The Telling (2009)

With this film we mark the beginning of what I’m referring to as T&A Horror week. This week we look at the movies that aim to exploit or revel in the common intersection of horror and sex. I figured The Telling would be a good one to start on as it starts 2 of the 3 Girls Next Door, Holly Madison and Bridget Marquadt, and several other models in the industry. The basic premise is that one year after a potential pledge kills herself after not getting in to the sorority, the newest potentials are brought in and told that the final test for inclusion is that they need to tell a scary story. I made up names for the various stories so I can quickly refer to them.

The first story is “Lily”, fairly standard story about a creepy doll. Lily’s boyfriend invites his ex to live with them while she finds a new place and then brings home a creepy doll. Jealousy of the ex then gets transferred over to the doll as it starts creepin up the place. Eventually it, surprise, murders the two girls and the guy gets blamed for it. Not much going on with this one. Of note, there is no nudity up through this story and I was actually wondering if they would

The second story is “The Last Role on Earth”. Eva, a starlet that needs work, takes a horror film job in Europe. It is shot in black and white…kind of. It’s like they just did a color drain since you can see things are green or red but it’s just very washed out. It tries to be more in the classic horror vein and at least has some interesting things. In the small time allotted it makes reference to the escalating nature of horror and that those who have “seen it all” need more and more in order to be shocked and also talks about the “immortality of film” such that those who are in movies can never really die and stay young forever. You get some nudity in a dream sequence but nothing plot related.

I call the last story “Girls Night”. Three roommates are planning to see a movie but it’s sold out and they decide to spend the night at home making prank calls. However, during one of the calls they end up hearing the person on the other end get murdered and the murderer says that he’s coming for them next. It then has a bunch of red herrings with maybe it’s the cop or the person that was fixing their cable earlier. Spoiler Alert: It was neither and was just some random person. Which is supposed to tie in since you then find out the pledge telling the story actually poisoned everyone else as revenge for the original death of her sister one year ago. You see, she is the random killer but that doesn’t actually work since she was an established part of the movie and not just a completely thrown in thing and whatever. I’m not actually expecting a lot of high caliber thought coming from this. And on boob watch, there is a very brief flash at the start.

In all it wasn’t nearly as bad I thought it would be going in but was also far less gratuitous in the nudity and what there was of it was much less of the “pandering” type. The only bit in the third story actually comes when the repair man sneaks past a room and so puts us in that same position of being some creepy person looking in on someone else uninvited. I’d like to think that there being so many actresses that had done nude modeling and that Bridget was a producer means that they had some say in just how exploitative it would be. All said I give it a 2 out of 5. Tolerable enough if forced to watch it and the multiple stories means that nothing really wears out its welcome too much.